Black Jack: The Movie

The Thrasher's Word

Format: Movie (92 Minutes)
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Studio: Shochiku
Director: Osamu Dezaki

This last week has seen the conclusion of the 2008 Olympic Games, and while professional sports generally don’t interest me, I do however have a fondness for world records. I was as amazed as everyone else when Usain Bolt seemingly effortlessly smashed the record time in the 100m sprint, pushing the boundaries of human achievement once again. With that in mind, it seemed a good time to check out “Black Jack: The Movie,” a 1996 conspiracy thriller based on the mysterious emergence of “super-human” athletes. Funnily enough, it reminded me in a roundabout sort of way just why televised sports tend to bore me.

“Black Jack” is based on the manga of the same name by Osamu Tezuka, the Father of Manga himself. As usual, I haven’t read the source material and I’m going in blind. The main character is the man who goes by the name of Dr. Black Jack, an unlicensed surgeon who nevertheless possesses extraordinary talent (“A surgeon with the hands of God” the film’s tagline audaciously proclaims) and will perform high-risk operations for astronomical sums of cash. His only companion in his quiet life is his precocious daughter, Pinoko. When a patient in his care dies despite his best efforts, she is posthumously revealed to have been a “super-human,” a batch of people all over the world who have been raising the bar in all areas of human endeavour, from athletics to art, and who have recently been found to be dying of an inexplicable disease. Black Jack is subsequently recruited to a team devoted to studying this disease, with Pinoko being taken as a hostage to ensure his co-operation. As the story progresses, a conspiracy is slowly unveiled, and super-humanism is shown not to be the natural phenomenon it was once thought to be.

You would be forgiven for thinking that all of that would make for a riveting narrative, and yet “Black Jack” turns out to fall strangely flat. This, I reckon, is due to the film’s direction and writing more than its subject matter. In spite of the dramatic material it has to work with, the film is left sorely wanting for an actual sense of drama. The individual scenes don’t seem to mesh together in any kind of manner that provokes tension, which isn’t to say that the film is messy, but rather that it just sort of drifts by, events coming and going without any notion given of their consequence or making an impact on the viewer. For example: one of the afflicted super-humans we’re introduced to is a 15-year old girl who has set a record 100m sprint time of 9.61 seconds, and has since succumbed to the disease to become a bony, emaciated shadow of a person. About a third of the way into the film, she goes mental: unable to accept her fate and unwilling to relinquish the glories of her past, she hurls herself headlong into a wall and kills herself.

Okay, fine. Perfectly valid, strong dramatic scenario there, and one which you’d think would be difficult to c**k up. But the film gives no indication of the thought process which leads the girl to go berserk, speaks nothing of whatever pent up feelings of rage and despair she must have felt to drive her to such an action. The event is simply shown to us, stripped of all its connotative value. The entire film plays out this way; clinical, impersonal, matter-of-fact.

The characterisation in “Black Jack” is actually pretty good: maybe not what you’d call “compelling,” in keeping with everything else, but still affording us a full picture of their personalities. You have Pinoko, the bright-eyed and vibrant girl who’s fiercely devoted to her father, Jo Carol, the pensive scientist whose good intentions have been warped by manic ambition, and Eric Caderry, a cocky and idealistic young doctor. The one anomaly of the pack, in fact, is Black Jack himself. He’s a cipher of a man, about whom we learn little to nothing and whose only discernable traits are a quiet studiousness and a strong respect for human life. He’s a peculiar figure, and I don’t know quite what to make of him. I’m not sure whether or not the film’s writers envisioned Black Jack as a “Ghost in the Shell”-esque portrait of the romantic outsider, a person whose disenfranchisement with the established order and the limitations set therein has led them to seek truth on their own terms, and indeed, the film’s conclusion seems to hint at a parallel between Black Jack and the exploits of Motoko Kusanagi.

The key difference here, however, is that at the end of Motoko’s journey there’s a sense of progress having been made and a viable conclusion to that character’s development. Black Jack, by contrast, remains as much of a cipher at the end of his film as he is at the beginning, and it was pondering upon this point that I realised what it was about “Black Jack” that bugs me. That is, it feels less like a stand-alone story than an episode of a nonexistent ongoing series. The end sees everything back to the way it was in the beginning, with any peaks or valleys of tension or emotion being skilfully avoided. Which isn’t to say that “Black Jack” is an awful film. The basic story is really pretty good, with a narrative that ties up every loose end and characters with believable personalities and motivations. But the writing and direction lack the boldness and the flair necessary to make any of it genuinely compelling or feel consequential.

“Black Jack’s” problems are compounded by its technical shortcomings. This film features uncomfortably stiff animation and strangely inexpressive character models.It would seem that Black Jack’s universal facial reflex to express any and all emotion is to widen his eyes. How very subtle. It’s almost like he’s the anime world’s equivalent of Steven Seagal and his eye-narrowing performances. And that’s to say nothing of the blurry backgrounds and excessively bold colour palette, completing the impression of a general lack of production values, particularly when you compare it with its contemporaries like “Macross Plus” and “X: The Movie.” The soundtrack is OK, if a bit schizophrenic with numbers ranging from cool background blues to J-pop ballads. Oh, and a word on Pinoko. Why, when all of the other characters look relatively realistic, does she alone retain the classic Tezuka stylisation? It just wreaks havoc with the film’s sense of consistency whenever she’s on screen.

To refer back to the cryptic way this review began, I don’t watch sports on TV because, unlike documentaries and other televised works of non-fiction, the way it’s presented makes it boring. History could be getting made before my eyes and I wouldn’t care because, regardless of the drama taking place, the camera angles, commentary and so forth will always be the same. It’s formulaic, it’s homogeneous, it’s monotonous. And “Black Jack” suffers in the same way. It has a wealth of strong source material to work with, but its dry, clinical manner of storytelling just doesn’t compel me to care. It’s not bad, in the same way that dry Ryvita doesn’t taste bad, but you wouldn’t consider it an enjoyable culinary experience either. You might get a kick out of “Black Jack: The Movie” if you love your mystery stories or are a massive conspiracy theorist. As for me, it just made me want to watch “Jin-Roh” again.
-Thrash Til’ Death

LAA Rating: **

Rating System:

* - Horrible
*1/2 – Very Bad
** - Bad
**1/2 – Good
*** - Very Good
***1/2 – Excellent
**** - Masterpiece

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